


A Thing With Feathers

by sequence_fairy



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-21 21:28:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13152393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sequence_fairy/pseuds/sequence_fairy
Summary: Lucifer isn’t much for office Christmas parties, but he’ll make certain exceptions.





	A Thing With Feathers

Lucifer watches the detective from the other side of the hall. Garish holiday decorations cover the walls, and tinny Christmas music wharbles through the speakers. The punch is weak, the canapés bland. This is really not Lucifer’s idea of a party, but Chloe had said she was going, and well, it’s not like he had anything truly better to do this evening.

(Isn’t that strange, he thinks, not having something better to do with his time than spend it here in some hall with the detective and her police colleagues in some pathetic effort to celebrate the holidays as a group of people who work together?)

She’s talking to Ella, their heads bent together over their glasses and Lucifer brings his drink to his mouth, tearing his eyes away from the spot where Chloe’s blonde hair meets Ella’s dark tresses. Chloe hasn’t looked over at the corner he’s been lurking in for at least ten minutes, she’s so involved in her conversation with Ella.

She’d said hello when he’d come in, but had been swept away to mingle fairly quickly, and he’d been left behind, drink in his hand. He’d done a tour of the room, saying hello to the detectives and patrol officers he and Chloe had worked with, and stopping to tease Daniel about the hideously ugly knitted thing he was wearing as a shirt, before ending up back where he’d started, near the doorway.

“It’s not like you to be such a wallflower,” Chloe says, and Lucifer looks up.

“I assure you, Detective, I’m not anything of the sort.”

“Just holding up the wall for fun then, Lucifer?” Her smile is teasing, but her eyes are soft. She reaches out, and drops her hand lightly on his arm. “You don’t have to stay,” she says, not looking him in the eyes.

“Whyever would I want to leave?”

“I just,” Chloe pauses, and looks back up at him. Something fluttery has grown in the space behind his sternum. The sensation is oddly jarring, as if there’s a bird taken roost inside his ribs. He finds it suddenly difficult to draw a complete breath. “I know this isn’t your scene,” Chloe is saying, but Lucifer is focused on the swoop of something delicious in his gut. He knows desire, is  _intimately_  familiar with it, but this is a new sensation and one that he should probably ask Dr Linda about, immediately.

“– Lucifer?” Chloe’s voice startles him out of his thoughts.

“Sorry,” he says, but she smiles, and there it goes again - that swooping feeling in his stomach and the fluttery thing in his chest. He coughs. Chloe’s brows furrow.

“You’re not getting sick are you?”

“Definitely not,” Lucifer answers, and makes a face. Chloe laughs, and from the corner of his eye, Lucifer watches heads turn in their direction and then swivel back. “I don’t get sick,” he says, leaning in to give her the look that works on everyone but her. “I’m the devil.”

“Oh, right,” Chloe agrees easily, teasing. “Couldn’t have the Lord of Hell come down with a man cold, now could we? Who’d run the place while you lay dying of the sniffles on the couch? Maze?”

“Detective, I don’t –”

Ella arrives then, flushed from the punch and wearing a pair of reindeer antlers set jauntily on her head. “Merry Christmas, Lucifer!” She says, and goes in for a hug. Lucifer saves his drink, barely, from catastrophe, and he and Chloe’s eyes meet over Ella’s head.

Lucifer extricates himself from the hug. “Blessed solstice,” he says, absently, as he manages to get Ella out to arm’s length from his body.

“You too, buddy.” Ella says, and sways a little when he lets her go. Her overbright eyes are a good indication she’s had too much of the punch. Her face tilts up, and then her eyes take on a calculating glint. Lucifer risks a look over his head, and oh no. He would recognize that pagan weed anywhere.

“C’mon Ella,” Chloe says. It’s all she gets out, because Ella is all of a sudden leaning up and in and Chloe doesn’t have a chance to do more than raise her eyebrows in surprise before Ella’s mouth lands on the corner of her own. When the shorter woman drops back onto flat feet, Chloe’s cheeks are flushed and she’s wide-eyed. “Ella, I don’t – I think you’ve had enough to drink!”

“Merry Christmas,” Ella says, and then winks at Lucifer as she wanders off back towards the drinks table.

“Wish I’d had my camera for that,” Lucifer muses, and Chloe frowns at him.

“Don’t get any ideas,” she warns.

“Cross my heart, Detective,” Lucifer says, miming the action with his free hand. Chloe rolls her eyes, but her mouth turns up at the corners. Lucifer considers it a win. “I’ve something for you,” he says, after taking a step to the left, out from under the plasticized version of the offending plant.

“Oh, you didn’t–”

“I know,” Lucifer interrupts, “but I wanted to.”

“I have something for you, too,” Chloe says, “but it’s back at the house. Why don’t you come by on Christmas Eve? Trixie would be thrilled to see you.”

The wingèd thing is back in place in his chest, and Lucifer nods, not trusting his voice, as his throat feels suddenly thick. Chloe smiles, and then turns to head back into the party. Lucifer watches her go, and then gulps back the dregs of his glass. He chalks the burn behind his eyes up to the cheap whiskey, and the warmth in his chest to the same.

(Christmas Eve at the Decker house is the most fun he’s had in a very long time - hot chocolate and tree-trimming, and Trixie singing carols off-key until they bundle her off to bed with promises of visits from flying reindeer. Once they are certain the tiny hellion is counting sugar plums, Chloe pours them both a glass of red wine, and Lucifer breaks his promise not to get ideas about mistletoe, and then ruins his good name entirely by backing Chloe up against the wall and kissing her breathless, pagan weed be-damned.)


End file.
